Ben Zimmer Named New York Times Language Columnist

March 12, 2010

We are very pleased to announce that Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, has just been named the "On Language" columnist for The New York Times Magazine. He will be replacing William Safire, who passed away last year after writing the "On Language" column for thirty years. Beginning with the March 21 issue of the Magazine, Ben will be writing the column on a biweekly basis.

Loyal readers will be familiar with Ben's work here in his "Word Routes" column, which he has written regularly since joining the Visual Thesaurus team in 2008. Before that time, he had worked as editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press, and he remains a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as a member of the American Dialect Society and the Dictionary Society of North America.

Ben's writing about language has also appeared in Slate, the Boston Globe, Forbes.com, and the linguistics blog Language Log. William Safire frequently called upon his linguistic expertise, once calling him "that etymological Inspector Javert." He filled in as "On Language" columnist in 2009 when Safire went on hiatus due to ill health, and after Safire's passing he wrote a touching tribute in the Magazine entitled, "The Maven, Nevermore."

In the official announcement from The New York Times, Ben said, "It's an honor and a privilege to be welcomed in the space that William Safire called home for thirty years. I look forward to continuing this fine tradition with my own take on how language shapes our past, present and future."

We too are looking forward to his explorations of the richness of language, which he will be pursuing in both his "Word Routes" and "On Language" columns. Congratulations, Ben!

Now we can all say: We knew Ben when "Palinize" wasn't a word. Even we Ohioans (via New York) know what a huge deal this is. Next thing we know, you'll be editing the NYT crossword puzzle. Can't wait to read you in the NYT.

This is fantastic news! Congratulations to Ben Zimmer. When William Safire passed away and James Kilpatrick retired "The Writer's Art" column, I felt an intelligent America would disappear even more quickly than current evidence indicated it would. I assumed our nation's language was doomed to drop into a dungeon of demoralizing, disasterous, deathly, and just plain dumb writing! Now I feel excitement, relief, and gratitude.

I am more than pleased since Safire's column is the only one I've been consistently reading in the Sunday Times. Ben is a perfect person to take over and I also hope he continues the grammar debated such as, "standing in line versus standing on line!"

This is great news! Congratulations, Ben. I was just saying Friday morning (I hadn't heard the news yet) that I although I really missed Safire, I did enjoy On Language when Ben wrote it. Back in September, I wrote on my blog (
http://wordsandcontext.com) about how I was "Lost on Language." While I'll always miss Safire, I'm really pleased to hear that we have a new navigator who will keep us on the right linguistic road.